iam finally done with bgp and iam happy that i had completed it at last ..
moving on my combination involves studying in two pair of concepts ..
bgp and qos
switching and multicast
eigrp and ipv6
ospf and security
are the primes .. so my next target would be going after qos ..
yes i had done it in the past but i want to gain perfection .. damn it iam gng to be a ccie
regards
had and exam in college all of a sudden and completed the hell now .. tonights plan is simple completing off bgp part 3 , bgp part 4 , bgp part 5 , bgp part 6 , qos part 1
will let you know where i landed …
regards
Done with
bgp part 1 intro
bgp part 2 attributes
qos part 1
qos part 2
qos part 3
started with ccnp qos and just going along with it .. so most probably would complete the qos
tommorow along with three other bgp videos (hopefully)
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/paper.htm
-> here is the link and this is how i would be planning my revision path
guday
the saying “its easier said than done ” is quite powerful …. i thought of covering bgp and qos today and you know what i could only cover qos beast today and that too only once without any proper perfection .. i dont know how to tackle this beast .. but i could see one thing .. i felt qos concepts easy infact very easy to master .. (i have mastered the concepts now i need to master the commands from this source ) .. hell its time talking … but we need to have a proper grip .. ccie # is all about the proper grip right ..
any ways i am still left with good 6 hours of study and i may start off with bgp and cover some of the videos or may start of with qos and do the second glance part out of may be 7 or 8 lol ..
will post the matter soon ..
best regards
Rakesh
tired …. this day has been a good one for me … i have done with half of the written videos from cbt and going very strong .. labbed with few different scenarios and knew some of the concepts like acl and other fun parts .. but as i need some revisiting of the topics i had to listen to them ..
went out and browsed forums / blogs as usual .. i think iam gonna do this cbt with in next four days if everything goes according to the plan ..
and yes from today on wards iam gonna follow the advice given by inetexperts Mr.anthony .. he told a better study technique of revision and has pointed to an article which has some detailed explanation of retaining the key points with number of revision attempts according to a algorithm ..
the algorithm states that revision should be done in 4 days , 9(days this is my own) , 13 (days my own) ..
so having done with the following concepts today iam gonna revist them after 4 days
cat 3550 concepts
stp
hsrp
ntp
acl
bridge
nat
today being firday – > sat – > sun -> monday -> tuesday (iam gonna revisti these videos again)
if i forget please remind me
target for tommorow :
multicast
bgp part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , part 4 , part 5 , part 6 , part 7 , part 8
or
multicast
bgp part 1 – 4 and qos three parts ..
depends on the topic start ..
its bedtime … bye and hot dreams
i have an overall of 5-6 sources of preparation path and i may look forward for buying ccie r and s from ipexpert .. but also considering the fact that inet expert does contain some of the best engineers … out of all , i usually look for scott morris side .. i have never met him in person , and not even talked with him but he is more or less like an inspirational factor for me along with few others … so having said that what did i do today and yesterday
i have started with core knowledge and went thorough some of the
multilayer switch features – > svi , intervaln routing , access-control
spanning tree features
access-list
nat
hsrp
ntp
what i look foreward for next two more days :
routing – remaning topics + revision of already done topics
so after the above plan i will be remaining with routing which will be done in two more days
so all in all source 1 out of 7 sources will be done successfully in next few days …
Thank you
Hello everybody …. as i said i went ahead and created all the videos of the labs .. but unfortunately as i forgot they are from standard workbooks which cannot be uploaded as is … so i need to make my labs and then make the videos again ..
i have decided to complete entire of the ccie written portion in 13 days from now . yes i mean it .. its not that new to me and i wanna revise it as we are given holidays ….
i will put the plan very shortly …
regards
Rakesh
Hello every one .. as there was a gap with videos and presentations i have been getting lot of mails about their continuations … the reason i discountiued was a bit wexed up and also rigorous study schedule in university of mine
From today or most probably tommorow i will post up the labs and their videos .. the problem being with the screen recorder itself .. iam on a linux machine and would love to screen cast from the same linux os itself but i had problems with that ..
so i had to reinstall windows and gns3 again to continue with the videos stuff
Best regards
Rakesh
“This post is all about detailing the time from my first attempt up until today. Disclaimer: I have done very little editing so it is me rambling.
On 15-Dec-08 I failed my first attempt at R&S, I was devastated that night and for half of the following day, The hardest part about the entire experience for me was showing up at work the next day and answering all those questions with ” I failed”. I’m not entirely sure if I was just unlucky or lazy, But If I had to pick then laziness/arogance would have been the one.
About lunch time on the day after I had enough of sulking and feeling sorry for myself, So I decided to come up with an action plan on how I would attempt the lab next, From my previous study and failed attempt I realised the following :
- Speed was not an issue for me,
- I needed to learn the doc cd better
- In reality my only weak areas were qos ( particularly switch based ) and some of the multicast concepts.
- The rest of the content I was very comfortable with and wasn’t to concerned.
Based on this, My new study plan started on the 5th of Jan and at this stage I hadn’t booked my second lab as this time I was going to wait until I had that feeling that I was ready.
First thing I needed to do was cover qos and mcast from the ground up. I used the CiscoPress QoS guide and The TCP/IP guides ( Which ever volume has mcast in it ). First I went over the theory, This was accomplished by writing out the concepts and operations in a notebook. After that I then went through every single command available for Qos. By this I mean I verified the operation of the command, then where it’s found in the doccd and finally created simple scenario labs on the fly just for the specific command to truly understand it. Once QoS was finished I basically did the same thing for multicast but focused on igmp, pim, autorp, bsr and anycast.
After this section of my study was done, I then pulled out Narbiks Advanced tech workbooks, Now the plan was to not *do* a single lab in these books. Instead I read the labbooks cover to cover. I read the qestions, The solutions and then researched the doccd for every section covered. Anytime I ran across something I didn’t remember, It was straight back to the doccd to firstly find it and then hit the examples and configs. During this time there were definately moments when I wanted to give up as reading workbooks isn’t the most exciting thing to do, But I forced myself to as there was no way i could handle failing twice.
This study regimn took about three weeks and finished around Wednesday Jan-21, So I booked my lab for the following Wednesday Jan 28. I managed to get from the 22 till the 28th off work which was great, The following is an overview of each of those days.
Thursday the 22. I didn’t do to much study on this day as I felt I needed a break and spent time with my girl.
Friday the 23. I had 2 x 8 hour ProctorLab sessions booked back to back, As I hadn’t done alot of lab work in the last month I did two mocklabs this day for endurance purposes.
Saturday and Sunday 24/25. Relaxed again, Friday absolutely fried my brain. spent more time with my girl
Monday the 26. Today was a repeat of Friday, Another 2 mocklabs done back-to-back
Tuesday the 27. One day before the lab, My plane left at 5pm, So I bummed around for most of the day with my girl. Arrived at my hotel around 7pm and had an awesome dinner with a few beers at the hotel, I managed to get to sleep about 10pm.
Wednesday the 28.
So Today is Lab day, I woke up about 7am and as the Sydney Lab is a 5 minute walk I took my time getting dressed, This was mainly to slow down and focus on getting my nerves under control. After that I had breakfast at the restaurant and checked out of the hotel around 7:50.
I think the walk to the Lab center is always going to be a fairly solemn event, I Just tried to focus on what was coming. I arrived at the Lab center at 8:05 or so and waited in the foyer for the proctor ( Scott ) who came out at around 8:15. He checked our id, handed out the visitor stickers and herded us into the metting root area. In there we had the usual rundown of rules. Btw Scott’s a funny man, He tried to pretend that the new open ended questions had been moved forward and were being introduced today . Two of the candidates got quite nervous at that stage.
And then into the lab we went, Officially we started at 08:29. I followed a similar strategy to last time, Except this time I didn’t do any large scale drawings, I used the provided diagrams for large scale reference and only drew specific components as I needed them, I think this made a slight difference. As I read the lab there were a couple of tasks that I thought would give me a headache but otherwise it looked good.
Everyone knows what comes next. I started configuring my devices, The tasks I thought might be problematic turned out to be very easy and that boosted my confidence a bit. I think out of the entire day I asked the proctor to clarify 3 points in total. Now there was one task that for some reason I just couldn’t get working properly, It wasn’t a core task so i decided to leave it till last.
I wasn’t really paying attention to the time so I was very surprised when it was lunch time and I only had 4 tasks to complete. Thats it, Only 4 including the problem task from earlier. I had already completed a very large majority of the exam.
Lunch was ok, Not worth paying 1500$ for though All the guys were pretty chatty which was good for a distraction.
Then back into the lab we went, I finished 3 of the remaining tasks within 30mins, So I Now went back to that problem task from earlier, I still can’t identify why it wasn’t working for me and it had me stumped. At this stage we still had 3hours to go and it was verification time. I double checked everything and found one task where i had missed a key word, Promptly fixed that up and went back to the problem task again.
Still I couldn’t get this task to operate properly so after about 30minutes of hair pulling I decided to forgo those points. I believe that if I kept at it I would have broken something else. I decided to sacrifice those points for the good of the lab .
By this stage there were two hours left. I had verified all tasks multiple time except the problem task. Now I know everyone advises to never ever ever ever leave the exam early, Well I got my nerves under control and I ignored that advice. I packed my booklet up, walked out of the lab and upto the proctor and said I’m done. The Proctor was great, He asked me a million times if I was absolutely sure, and then asked another million times just to clarify. I think you all know the rest of the story from here.
Reflection Time:
I am still in shock and this hasn’t fully sunk it. Now the term “Router God” which I used in the title. This term has held a very special meaning for me for a long time, Ever since I first heard about these people called CCIE’s, very rarely did they have names in the stories and the stories were always told with awe. Router gods are those people that have been there, smashed the lab and know their stuff. I’ve made it and this feeling is awesome.
I need to thank Melissa Forro. She is my girl and has put up with all my continual study, stress and general crankiness that often results from a journey like this. My wish was to get those digits before Christmas as I planned propose to Mel on Christmas day and I wanted to be able to be there fulltime for her. Unfortunately it wasn’t so, Yet I still proposed and she said yes, So babe I’m sorry this took me away for a little longer but its over now. We made it.”
First I would like to thank everyone who responded. And this wouldn’t be possible without the support if my wife and family. Plus my wife owed me since I supported her during the bar exam I have been a “passive” member on the forum for a while now and it is exciting to see so many people accomplishing their goals. I know I will sound like a broken record so just bare with me. I started the whole journey in April of this year. I started with the recommended book list and started reading 6 hours a day. I took and passed the written in the beginning of June. Shortly after I scheduled the lab for DEC. 18th in RTP and bought practice labs from “The Brians”. Now this is where the broken record part come in….
I was very fortunate that my employer had a full scale lab at my discretion. I took advantaged and labbed every moment I could, over lunch, nights and weekends were spent in the lab. Any question about a technology I had I would lab it up. But first understanding the technologies before labbing anything is a must. You will definitley learn the most by labbing but you first must understand how the protocols function and how they interact with each other. You did this by reading books and forums as well as Video on Demand, from the vendor of your choice of course. But as soon as I read the materials and had a really good base knowledge of the fundamentals it was time to lab. And oh did I lab. My rack time is estimated to be around 1600 hours over the course of 6 months. I also continued to read when I wasn’t labbing. I lived, eat and breathed the CCIE. I would go to bed and think of scenarios in my head and try to solve them (my wife didn’t like this very much since I would toss and turn most nights). I wanted to be prepared for anything that the lab threw at me. So having an expert level of knowledge for the core topics is a must.
When I first started labbing it would take me 12 or more hours to complete the first 6 labs. I took my time and really made sure that I understood what was asked of me and that I properly interpeted the tasks correctly. As I continued to lab I became faster and solutions would come to me a lot quicker. After completing about 50 labs I could complete a lab around 5.5 or 6 hours. And I could solve pretty much any core topic without hesitation. This came with the number of hours I spent on the rack. I also created “mini” scenarios on specific technologies like Multicast or Qos to focus on my weak areas. This was to ensure that I was at least familiar with most of the non-core topics. And believe me the DOC-cd is your friend throughout the whole journey, not just in your lab. As the time grew nearer I spent more time focusing on my weak areas such as Qos, Security and the dreadful Redistribution. Please tell me if you have ever seen a “real life” network where you have 3 routing protocols. But, the CCIE isn’t real life scenarios, it is everything else. I really doubt that I run IPv6 over frame relay but if there is a chance that I do I will be ready:)
Alright so that was a little background on the preperation so lets get into the fun stuff….Lab Day
I took the the lab in RTP. There is a video I think was posted a while back from Cisco that did a walk through of the lab in RTP I believe. But everything is pretty much spot on. I showed up about 6:45 at the front door and there was 5 other candidates waiting outside to get inside the lobby of the building. One of the proctors showed up shortly after and we all sat down in the lobby to wait for everyone else. Around 7:05 the proctor came back out and gave us our badges with our rack numbers. After a briefing on the facilities and the lab environment I sat down at my cube. All cube walls are short and there isn’t very much space to spread out all of the pages you need. Plus the monitor takes up quite alot of room on the desk. So after a quick read through of the exam I logged into the CRT sessions. I used the individual CRT sessions for each device, I found it to navigate alot easier. I then drew up my diagrams and my task list with points per task. And I was off….
I approached the lab like any other lab I was doing on my rack. Of course it was different than what I was used to but it didn’t take me long to get settled in. My goal was to complete layer 2 and layer 3 with full reachability by lunch. I was fortunate enough to obtain that goal and I got half through the IPv6 section. So when it came for lunch time I estimated that I had around 70 points which was a HUGE relief. Knowing that I had 4 hours to get 10 points was a weight off of my shoulders. I did a quick wr mem and reloaded my rack. Lunch was actually pretty good the food wasn’t bad and they had chocolate cake, but leave some for the proctors. I sat and talked with one of the proctors for a while about Cisco in general. Just so you know if you take the lab in RTP your rack will most likely be in San Jose. The environment is a little noisy with constant fan noise. I believe the storage CCIE racks and some of the security racks are in RTP. So after lunch, I sat back down and I hammered through the rest of the exam. I finished with 3 hours to spare, so I did a wr mem and reboot again. I took a coffee break, told Howard, the Packers loving proctor, that the Bears rule and I started going through the exam again. I found 3 small mistakes that could have cost be 8 points but knowing I had the time in the end to triple check everything was a huge confidence booster. I went through the entire exam 3 times and tried to solve each question everytime to make sure I came up with the same solution and that I completed the tasks correctly. I did ask the proctor some clarification on some “loose wording” and they were both helpful, even for a packers fan So with an hour left in the day I was getting pretty antzy. I felt pretty confident that I did well but task interpetation was the only thing standing in my way. I did a final reboot and full reachability test at the end of the day.
After the exam I went back to the hotel to un-wind and ran to get some dinner. About 1.5 hours after I walked out the exam I recieved the notification in my email that my score report was available. But I was pretty confused because it was a very short time that I just got done so I figured the worst like my rack crapped out and I would have to take it over. So I logged in and that was the longest 3 minutes of my life. I scrolled down to see the PASS next to the R&S lab and I jumped for joy, for real. I jumped on the couch of my hotel room and started shouting. I then contacted my wife and family to tell them that I actually passed the lab on my first attempt. This has been a career long journey, this is something I have always wanted to accomplish and I did it. If you take the time to fully understand the technologies and you develop the speed, you can pass. This is exam not only tested my technical knowledge but my time management skills. Like everyone says “SPEED IS VITAL”. If you can complete the lab and have time in the end to double check your work you will be one step closer to passing. I hope this write up provides some sort of inspiration for those who are studying. But, the exam is passible and fair. If you study your butt off and remain motivated and positive, good things will come. Good luck to all of you who are studying, I am truely grateful for going through this journey. I feel that I am a better person for it
